"I suppose he could," Jack laughed, "and you are a thoughtful young
fellow, J.W., but never mind about that. One of the sailors, Bucephalus,
any one, in fact, could have done what I did. In fact, it is all in the
day's work at sea, and nothing is thought of it."

"No, but no one else did it, Jack. Any one might, but no one did. Only
you. Any one else could have done it, but they did not all the same.
That's nonsense about your pitching me overboard. I heard some of them
talking of it. Why, you were not there. I was on the quarter deck, where I
had no business to be, I suppose, with just a little bit of a low rail,
and when the vessel took a sudden roll I went overboard."

"Jack saw you up there," said Percival, who was walking with the others,
"and spoke about warning you that it was dangerous. In fact, he was on the
way to tell you when you got ahead of him and rolled overboard."

"Jack is all the time thinking of some one," said young Smith. "That's
what makes him different from the other Hilltop boys."

"Oh, then you don't think I think of others, eh? That's one on me."

"Oh, you haven't had to, Dick, you have always had some one to think for
you," said Jesse W. wisely, and both Dick and Jack laughed.

"That young fellow will be doing something for you, Jack," said Percival a
few minutes later when the two happened to be alone. "He is thinking of it
now, and later you will hear from it."

"I suppose he will," said Jack thoughtfully, "and I don't know how I can
stop him. I could not help doing what I did, but you would have done the